Fifty-Six

A sparkling collaboration between 2 published poets, neither of whom knew each other before this book.

As George Szirtes says in his introduction to this poem sequence that collaboration at its best is a magical form of encounter – and this book has all the marks of an extraordinarily stimulating and creative experience for both poets.

Carol Watts opens the batting with a 28-line poem inspired by a painting by Jenny Saville entitled ‘The Red Stare’. George is unaware of Carol’s starting point, but responds to her rich language and imagistic energy with a 27-line poem.

A 26-line poem from Carol follows and thus the trajectory of this poem sequence is set, each poem being one line shorter than its predecessor until a central point of one single line is reached. Then the process of ‘re-building’ begins, until a final poem of 58 lines concludes the sequence. Unusual and unpredictable, this uninhibited exchange between poets makes for exciting reading.